


Milk and Fire

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Breastfeeding, Canonical Underage Relationship, Don't wake the baby, F/M, Family Bed, Missionary Position
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:00:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29155473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: Pavetta takes her husband and their baby to bed on a winter night.
Relationships: Duny/Pavetta (The Witcher)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 122
Collections: A Witcher Wheel of the Year 2021





	Milk and Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on warnings/tags: This is Underage in the strict definition of the AO3 tag (Pavetta is under 18) but not in the characters' own context (this is more than a year after Pavetta's marriage to Duny, so she's a wife and mother and as much of an adult as she can ever be by Cintran law and custom.) Breastfeeding is both the mom-feeding-baby kind and (after baby falls asleep) the sexy mommy-and-daddy-private-time kind. 
> 
> Written for the Imbolc festival in the Witcher Wheel of the Year, specifically for the prompt "lactation".
> 
> Many thanks to Toffee, Hobbit, and the discord gang for help and encouragement!

Winter in Skellige wasn't an entirely pleasant season, but it held many moments that made Pavetta wish spring would never come. 

The days were starting to lengthen, which she noticed largely because Duny had begun to slip out of bed early to greet the dawn--something he faithfully did every morning in any weather, including impenetrable snowstorms, ever since the morning after their tumultuous wedding. He was gone a little earlier, day by day, and the sunlight lasted longer each evening, but the nights were still long and cold enough that no one questioned Duny and Pavetta retiring along with Ciri, relatively early. Pavetta's excuse was that Ciri still liked to nurse before she slept; Duny's excuse, as far as Pavetta knew, was that he was besotted with his wife and child. She didn't think anyone who didn't share his bed was really aware of how early he rose in the morning.

Pavetta understood. He had gone a long, long time without being able to show his face under the sun. It was no wonder he woke up every day eager to greet it, now.

For the long dark nights, however, he was hers--hers and Ciri's. Pavetta was often herself lulled to sleep by Ciri's last feeding of the night, so she prepared herself for bed while Duny sat by the fire, keeping Ciri awake and distracted. His voice rose and fell in a soft, lilting rhythm--he was speaking Elder, reciting some poem or fable for her. Pavetta would probably be able to puzzle it out if she saw it written, but she wasn't fluent in it the way Duny was. She hoped that Ciri would learn it easily, with her father speaking it to her; for herself, it was enough just to listen.

When her hair was braided and she was ready to settle in for the night, Pavetta went and leaned against Duny's back, looping her arms around his shoulders. Ciri was watching him raptly, gnawing at the knuckle of his first finger with her three tiny teeth, and Pavetta drank them both in until Duny's recitation drew to a close.

"And now, I think your mama is ready for you," Duny murmured, his accent thicker for a moment, as it always was when he switched back to speaking the Nordling tongue. Ciri, of course, understood him equally in any language--and when he said _mama_ , Ciri's wide-eyed gaze broke from him to look for Pavetta. She wriggled delightedly and dropped Duny's knuckle to shriek at her mother when she found her. 

"Yes, darling," Pavetta agreed, kissing Duny's cheek and reaching down to swipe drool from Ciri's chin--uselessly, of course, but she could never just ignore it, even if there would be just as much again the next time she looked. "Come on, come to bed." 

She took a step back herself, freeing Duny to actually stand up, and turned to the bed, shrugging out of her wrapper as she did. She laid it at the foot of the bed and toed out of her slippers as she climbed up. As ever, Duny came a step behind her and nudged her slippers neatly into place while Pavetta got under the covers, then handed Ciri to her so he could shed his own clothes and join them.

Ciri reached for Pavetta just as eagerly, legs pumping wildly while her hands aimed unerringly for what she really wanted. Pavetta laughed, holding Ciri at arm's length with an effort--nine months old already, she was getting so _big_ \--until she'd managed to lie down on her side and arrange the coverlet so Ciri wouldn't be smothered but neither of them would be chilled. 

Then she only had to stop holding her daughter away. Ciri crawled into place, tucking her legs against Pavetta's belly--only kicking a little in the process. Her hand landed on her mother's breast and clung fiercely as she latched on and began to nurse. 

"Tsk, Cirilla," Duny murmured beside Pavetta's ear, as he settled behind her, the whole warm length of his body pressing to hers as he drew the covers over himself, tucking them all in together. He reached over to worm his finger into Ciri's grip, so she wasn't digging her strong little fingers into Pavetta's flesh. "Be good to your mother."

Pavetta huffed softly, curling an arm around Ciri as she went on suckling hungrily, unconcerned with her father's gentle admonition. "That's not a baby's place," Pavetta pointed out to her husband. "How will she grow big and strong if she doesn't demand everything she needs from her mother?"

"Hmph," Duny said, nuzzling at Pavetta's cheek, letting his fingers--still held fast in Ciri's grip--rest against her breast. His smallest finger stroked the curve of Ciri's cheek as she sucked. "Then I suppose it's up to her father to be good to her mother, isn't it?"

"Naturally," Pavetta agreed, tilting her face up for a kiss, which Duny bestowed without hesitation or stinting. 

Pavetta shivered a little at how good it felt, sweet kisses and the steady tug of Ciri's mouth as she took what she needed, what Pavetta wanted more than anything to give her. Duny didn't stop kissing her when he felt her tremble, but he held her a little tighter, and pressed his legs closer so she could warm her feet on them. Ciri wriggled as if she wanted to join in on the readjusting, and Pavetta broke away from Duny's mouth, laughing, to settle her daughter.

Duny snuggled up again behind her without complaint; she glanced up and saw him gazing down at Ciri with every bit of the loving fascination that Ciri had turned on him while he spoke to her.

Just so. Her daughter had a father worth loving; Pavetta had done that much right, in finding and cleaving to the husband destiny had chosen for her. She closed her eyes and let herself do nothing but feel, surrounded by the family she had won for herself.

It didn't take long, though, before what she felt was the increasingly pressing ache in the breast Ciri hadn't latched on to. She sighed a little, preparing to resituate herself and Ciri on the other side, and opened her eyes only to see Ciri's eyelashes settling against her round cheek. She kept sucking drowsily for a moment, while Pavetta was looking down at her in exasperation, and then her mouth fell open and she gave a gusty baby sigh and smacked her lips, clearly sound asleep.

Pavetta let out her own sigh and let her head fall back against Duny's shoulder. "I shouldn't wake her and try to make her take more, should I."

Duny's faintly amused look turned to a very sincere wince. "I don't think it would help, no." 

Duny had seen nearly as much of that as Pavetta had, this winter, while they were living cozily together in the Skelliger fashion: Ciri did not take kindly to being woken when she'd just fallen asleep, if she _could_ be woken. Trying it now was likely to either be futile or result in a furious baby, kicking and screaming instead of nursing. 

Pavetta shook her head in agreement, tried to find a comfortable position, and winced again.

Duny's expression turned worried. "Is it very bad? I could go get..."

He trailed off, obviously having no idea who or what might be helpful, however willing he was to go and fetch a remedy. Pavetta groaned and twisted to lie on her back so she could hide her face against his chest at just the _thought_ of consulting a bluff Skelliger midwife--or worse, her self-appointed keeper, Mousesack--about something as silly and easily-solved as having more milk than her baby wanted at the moment. 

There wasn't a baby currently in need of wet-nursing in the vicinity; Pavetta had found herself abruptly inducted into the network of nursing mothers who might be tapped in such a pinch. She'd done her part a few times, each time praying word would never get back to her mother; Calanthe was scathing enough about the propriety of Pavetta nursing her own royal child, let alone the offspring of Skelliger servants and fishwives. In the spring, once the seas where calmer, they would go back to court at Cintra, and her mother would doubtless have something to say about Pavetta _still_ nursing Ciri when she was nearing a full year old--but for now it was still winter, and Pavetta had only the insistence of her own body to contend with.

The solution was obvious, if vexing: she simply had to express the milk and dispose of it, since there was no other use for it. That would mean getting out of bed, since she couldn't see any way it wouldn't make a mess. Even more than the chill in the air outside the bed and Duny's embrace, the thought of leaving her husband and daughter to relieve herself of milk as if it were piss left her feeling cold, jerked out of the cozy closeness she'd just been savoring. She felt a prickle of silly tears, and shook her head as she blinked them away. 

"It's fine," she said, but her voice shook a little--foolish, childish, she could hear her mother scolding her softness, and tried to remind herself that there was, for now, still a sea between them. "I just have to--"

Duny hugged her closer to him, pressing his lips to her forehead, her brows. "That doesn't sound fine, _cara_. Let me help, can I help somehow?"

The ways Duny could help flashed through Pavetta's mind almost before he'd finished speaking, and she melted a little in his embrace, biting back a moan. 

Duny made a questioning noise, not quite a word, as he picked his head up enough to meet her eyes; his cheeks had gone pink, his eyes wide. "I don't--I mean--"

Pavetta recalled suddenly that there had been a time or two, in the first month after Ciri was born, when Duny had seemed... a different kind of interested, in her newly full breasts. Pavetta had scarcely wanted to be touched at all, then, and she dimly recalled that she had been a bit scathing, telling him off. She had, possibly, sounded very like her own mother. It had probably made a lasting impression.

She was in no way opposed to her husband's touch, nowadays. She shifted away from him a little, situating Ciri in the curve of her other arm, and said, "You can help, darling. Please."

He _bit his lip_ , and the boyish hesitation shouldn't have been even more arousing than the rest of it, but it sent another curl of heat through her all the same. She raised her hand to his head, sliding her fingers into the curls of his hair, and tugged him gently downward. 

Duny went where she guided him, a little awkwardly adjusting his position to lie lower in the bed at her side, bringing his mouth to her aching breast, which only throbbed harder at his nearness. His motions were slow, cautious, and he looked up to meet her eyes again with his lips hovering just above her breast, as if to make sure that she really had meant for him to do this. Pavetta smiled down at him and arched just enough to make her nipple brush his lower lip; he shivered visibly, his eyes closing as his mouth opened wide.

There was another moment of awkward maneuvering, his lips and tongue finding their places, not to kiss or caress, but to latch. Pavetta felt her milk letting down, spurting a little into his mouth, and he startled. 

"See how you like it," Pavetta murmured, trying not to actually giggle as she realized that she'd been on the opposite side of that plenty of times. 

Duny shot her a warm look, holding her gaze as he sucked strongly enough to say without words: _I do like it_.

Pavetta liked it too--liked the opposite, and liked this maybe even more. She felt the tug of his mouth through her whole body, and it was like and not at all like feeding Ciri, like and not at all like Duny's mouth on her for other reasons. 

Duny's eyes closed as he focused on sucking, and Pavetta let her own eyelids sink, so that he was a dark blur at her breast--and Ciri, sleeping heavily against her other side, was a firelit tousle of gold. Dark and bright, man and child, but they were both hers to care for tonight. 

Duny leaned into her body as he went on nursing from her, and the familiar weight of him, the press of his skin on hers, tilted the scales of the sensations. His hand rested on her belly, his finger stroking one of the pink stripes where her growing belly had split her skin a year ago--it was the same hypnotic rhythm as his finger stroking Ciri's cheek, earlier, in time with the pulls of his mouth.

It didn't feel like the same thing at all. Heat gathered in her core, the needy ache intensifying even as the pressure of milk eased from her breast. She rocked her hips a little, chasing the sensation, and spread her legs just to feel the wetness between them.

Duny stilled for a moment, not even seeming to breathe. Pavetta took her hand from his hair, unwinding her fingers gently from the curls they'd twisted into, to lay her hand over his on her belly and guide it lower. He kept going when she stopped pushing, letting his hand slide slowly, deliberately over her thigh before dipping between. 

She gasped when his fingers pressed into her, though she was thoroughly ready and there was nothing sudden about it--his familiar touch felt new somehow, like this. He stroked her slowly, in time to the drawing of his mouth, and for a time she let him, luxuriating in the strange new kind of closeness between them, this way of loving each other they'd somehow never stumbled onto before.

But the pull of Duny's mouth turned from satisfying to futile, and the slow press of his fingers became a tease rather than something to savor. Pavetta tugged at his shoulder, the nape of his neck, until he raised his mouth from her breast and let her reel him in for a kiss, tasting milk-sweet--like Ciri, but not at all like that. 

Duny moved over her and this wasn't new at all, this was familiar and easy and satisfied another urgent need. He pushed into her fully, a slow sweet pressure and fullness, the sealing of the connection they'd forged again and again. Pavetta curled her arm around his neck to hold him close, stealing as many kisses as she could as he moved in her, finding the right pace. Not too fast, and they couldn't be loud. Waking Ciri _now_ would be much worse than trying to wake her before; Pavetta muffled a giggle against Duny's lips at the thought, and, as if in answer, Ciri wriggled decisively against her side. 

They both froze at the movement, and Pavetta looked over to watch Ciri roll away from her side, settling face down with her knees tucked under her, her diapered bottom uppermost. She let out a satisfied little sigh and went still again.

Pavetta looked up at Duny and then they were both laughing softly, both trying to hush each other with kisses even as Duny began to move again. Pavetta finally reached up and pressed one finger to his mouth, only for Duny to close his lips around it and suck, which sent a startling shock of pleasure through her. She ground up against him, chasing her peak, and Duny got a hand to her hip, helping her find just the right angle. 

Even this was familiar, every step a dance they'd moved through together a hundred times before--but still good, so good, and Pavetta had to press her own hand to her mouth to keep quiet as she reached her climax, pleasure bursting over her in a rush that blotted out everything.

Duny followed swiftly, moving in her for only a few moments before he spent, and then settling over her with just enough of his weight to be warm and comforting without being suffocating. Pavetta lay still a while, breathing him in and drifting toward sleep--soothed to it, after all, even if it hadn't been Ciri's nursing to send her there tonight. 

She reached over as the thought crossed her mind, resting her hand on Ciri's back. Duny's hand settled over hers, their fingers interlacing, and Pavetta struggled to stay awake just a little longer, to savor the perfect winter warmth of her husband and their baby in their bed on this night.

The spring would come, and all this would change; tomorrow morning Duny would slip away earlier than he had today. But for now, the turning of the seasons held them here, at this quiet center, and for now it was enough.


End file.
